Financial Times

Chinese, Indians dominate at Transport exhibition
At the recently held transport exhibition organised by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CIIT), Indian and Chinese-made vehicles dominated.

There were however some Japanese models made in India like Yamaha and Suzuki that were on show.

Professor Dayanath Wijayasekara, Senior Professor (Civil Engineering) and former CIIT chairman, speaking at the inauguration as the chief guest, said transportation is an essential component in developing the economy. He also referred to the importance of having a transportation policy which has actually been in discussion since 1989 and hoped that it would be taken up in the near future.

Speaking to The Sunday Times FT Asiri Merenchige, director of WASANA Trading Company (Pvt) Ltd which markets Chinese brand names such as CHANA, said that there is a big demand for low cost vehicles since taxes have risen on vehicle imports. Further he said that the market is still growing and that he is actually running out of stocks. “The customer is attracted to the Chinese vehicles as they are low in price but the quality is good, as same as Japanese vehicles because the technology used is Japanese. The CHANA brand is manufactured using Suzuki and Ford technology so the quality is assured. The other factor is that the price is almost half the cost of a Japanese reconditioned vehicle.”

It was evident at the exhibition that dominance of Indian-origin vehicles was also since cost has become a driving factor in vehicle purchases. Chinese and Indians models are brand new and give the customer the choice of buying a brand new vehicle for half the price of the cost of a second-hand Japanese vehicle.

However the exhibition was not devoid of any local products all together. The Cey-Nor Foundation had an interesting line of sea and land vehicles on exhibition. One was the multipurpose boat the foundation had designed which could be used for both tourism and transportation as well for fishing. The special feature in this is that the boat is designed not to sink or go under in a crisis, and could carry up to 12 passengers a trip.

Foundation officials said the boat was produced locally with only raw materials and the engine being imported. The foundation has also developed a special 3-wheel scooter to provide small scale fishermen greater mobility and an opportunity to sell their catch to the customer directly. This scooter which has a refrigerator fixed inside, can travel up to 70km per hour and carry 250kg of fish at a time.

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